Is reporting bots useless?

Ive killed the same bot the past 2-3 days well over 40times, as well as reporting the same bot 20times, as i seen him in the past farming this same spot since the 40’s leveling band.

Is it 1 report per character thats counted over the entire account, or can 1 person reporting 4 times have the same effect as 4 different people reporting?

How many reports would it take to trigger a blizzard investigation?

Because it seems the only way for me to get a bot banned is to make a youtube video about the bot and explaining its actions for it to get a ban.

Or is botting against the rules, but just ignored? kinda like j walking its illegal, but its pretty rare to see a cop take you to jail over it.

It is not a bolt of lightning from the sky at time of report quick. Blizzard will study the suspected bot to verify if it is in fact a bot. If it is then they will work to break the bot before handing down any penalties. This way they are able to cast a wider net and identify and penalize those using that specific bot. As well as prevent that current bot software from continuing to function within the parameters of the game.

Just keep reporting as you see any suspicious activity. One report per account is enough.

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One report will have them checking. Keep in mind they do not always ban right away. They may want to study and see what they do. More so if warden did not see the bot they want more info to change that.

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Yes. Only one report per Bnet account is taken. It avoids people switching alts to try to abuse the reporting function.

They don’t share that info, but there is more to it than JUST reports. Blizzard does need those reports to start the investigation into a bot program or pattern. From there they spend time analyzing it, figuring out the “signature” to detect it, etc. Once they can detect it they scan for everyone using that bot and do a ban wave all at once.

That can, and does, take time. You won’t see most bots get hit individually - it happens during a ban wave.

That can be useful in showing the Hacks team examples to use in their investigations into botting software or patterns, but they don’t use Youtube for reports. That won’t get someone banned. Imagine if someone could just make videos and have people banned.

You can use the right click report in-game functions, and you can send deeper pattern analysis to hacks@blizzard.com - such as your video.

Also keep in mind, they DO get banned but often re-use character names so it looks like they don’t. There is also a sneaky version they do where they bot for X time then delete their own character, make a new one of the same name and keep going. They seem to think that helps avoid detection and makes people think nobody cares.

They ban tens of thousands of WoW accounts a month. That does not even count the other Blizzard games. Overwatch Asia seems to have just gotten a big ban wave for example.

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Reporting is not useless, please keep Reporting as you can.

These criminal organizations have very little incentive to stop considering the money they’ve stolen in the past.

Behind the scenes thousands of illicit accounts are closed monthly, reports do work.

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Absolutely not! I’m pretty sure the bots I reported a few days ago were banned. OFC Blizz doesn’t say that, but they still semi-confirm with in-game mail “thanking you” for the report.

Just report as you see it (with details, if you can provide) and move on. They WILL get to it.

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Also keep in mind as quick as they ban bots the botters will just replace them with new stolen accounts. Will either reuse the same names or names so close you think nothing has changed

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